[jambutty]

Many people are switching to Broadband and buying one of several bandwidth packages where there is a monthly bandwidth limit.

As far as Freeserve (Wanadoo) and BT Internet are concerned the deal is this. You pay a monthly fee and are able to use the specified bandwidth. Should you go over the top both named ISP’s will contact you to say so and if it continues they will suggest that you buy a package with a higher bandwidth, for more money of course. If you don’t agree then the chances are that next time you go over the top your connection will be disabled until the next month. That’s fair enough as far as it goes.

But you the customer has no idea how much bandwidth you have used at any time during the month. The best that you can hope for is bandwidth information for the current session. You could of course keep a record and add up as you go along but you would be dealing with nine digit numbers and it would be all too easy to make a mistake. If you share your Internet connection with other members of your household it would be next to impossible to keep track of usage.

There is software available to monitor the bandwidth used to date but that is designed for commercial purposes and comes with a hefty fee.

When it comes to electricity, gas and even water in some cases there is a meter that you can read to see how much energy or water you have used to date. Should your usage be higher than anticipated you can either be prepared for a higher bill or reduce your usage. YOU HAVE A CHOICE.

With Broadband bandwidth usage you have to trust the ISP to record how much you use and it seems to be a closely guarded SECRET. If you go over the top by a bit you do not get told by how much and thus you have no idea how much you should cut back your Internet activity if you don’t want to pay for a larger package. Just suppose that you have the 6GB package and go over the top and use 6.5GB month after month. You will eventually be told to increase your bandwidth package, which can be to at least 10GB. (20GB for BT Internet)

Each customer’s bandwidth usage must be monitored otherwise the ISP would not be able to suggest a large package when you do go over the top. The ISP knows precisely how much bandwidth you have used but they won’t tell you.

We have the RIGHT to that information as it happens, much in the same way that we know how much energy we have used at any given time.

Would you trust your energy supplier to supply you with an accurate bill if you didn’t have a meter in your house? Half the time they can’t get the bill right when someone reads the meter and if they make a guesstimate it is usually wrong.

An ISP is not too different in that they supply a commodity - that is the downloading and uploading of data measured in bytes.

When challenged on the point both Wanadoo and BT came back with the same response – Bandwidth usage to date is not available to the customer.

WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW HOW MUCH BANDWIDTH WE HAVE USED AT ANY GIVEN TIME.